Buy Into The Breach, get free FTL… On Steam, too

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The howling vortex of hypercapitalism that is Christmas may be behind us, but judging from the amount of snow outside my window, it’s still the season to be Santa-esque. Not to be one-upped by GOG and Humble, Steam are now offering a free copy of FTL with every purchase of the fantastic Into The Breach, a drum-tight tactical puzzle that has captured the hearts, minds and other less vital organs of several of RPS’s writers.

Better still, this deal is fully retroactive, if you’ve already picked up the game, and if you already own FTL on Steam you’ll find a giftable copy in your inventory to share with someone. Within, we have some handy tips on how to pick who in your life to share it with.

So, you’ve found yourself with a spare copy of FTL! Lucky you – it means you already had the game, and know the full responsibility of command. No doubt countless missions have gone by without a single casualty, such are your leadership skills.

This, of course leaves you with the unenviable yet vital task of choosing a single friend to burden with the responsibility inherent in starship command. We here at RPS Towers recommend holding a series of one-on-one interviews, with questions based around which Star Trek captain their answers most align with, and assigning the game based on personal preference. While there are no wrong options, if you pick Janeway, you’re wrong. Sorry.

As a potential bonus round, if they manage to hit at least 80% alignment with General Grin’s Picard, then you are morally obligated to not only give them the game, but also buy them a copy of Into The Breach so that they can choose their successor. Also, you should fear and respect this person.

I just have a hard time envisioning this theoretical person who would enjoy FTL, but does not yet own a copy. I feel like even people who *don’t* enjoy FTL own copies, just cus they had to see what all the fuss was about..!

If someone is too poor to buy FTL (previously as cheap as $1.99) they’re sure as hell too poor to spend $14.99 on Into the Breach, which incidentally, is a required purchase in order to get the ‘free’ copy of FTL. Making the whole deal… not free.

You make three really, really weird assumptions. One, that someone’s disposable income stays exactly static across their lifetime, and therefore if they can afford to buy a game now they must have always been able to buy every other game. That is not how the real world works.

Two, that someone is either desperate to play a game or refuses to play it. In the real world, people have different priorities. It may be that they would be interested in FTL, but not so much that they would spend lots of money on it. Meanwhile they are more interested in Into The Breach and so are willing to pay more for it.

Three, that everyone obsessively follows the price fluctuations for every product they are even tangentially interested in. Therefore if a game cost $1.99 for a short period in the sales, when there were loads of other games on sale too, everyone who was willing to buy the game at that price (and of course, everyone’s disposable income is exactly static across their lifetime, as you believe) would have definitely bought it. Their not having spotted that deal couldn’t possibly have been an explanation.

I’m not making any assumptions at all. If someone has $15 to buy Into the Breach now they have $15 now. Unless they found a couple of notes lying on the street in the last five minutes, there’s a very good chance they’ve had $15 for a bit longer than that.

All OP was saying, and pretty much everyone else seems to agree with, is that the game has been in so many bundles and in so many sales for so long now that it’s a miracle that there’s anyone left in the word who doesn’t already have a copy.

As a result, a ‘free’ copy of FTL isn’t actually much of ‘deal’ for anyone other than your hypothetical homeless person whose just won the lottery.

The PHD that you have written about my two sentence post says far more about your own assumptions and apparent desperate need to start some kind of RPS comment war than anything at all relevant to the original article.

Yyyyeah, I guess I just assumed that anyone who’s interested in FTL, or Into the Breach, is actively playing and buying games, and so we could kind of take for granted that they have at least that much spare change to spend, or else they pirate stuff, in which case it’s not exactly spendy. But moreover, I was playing games to keep sane when I was homeless and living in my car, so again, I’m not seeing a huge barrier to entry in the poverty line. It was actually cheaper than drinking beer every night like a standard homeless guy, which was a big part of what made it my standby. But you’re right, it’s absolutely my bourgeoisie attitude and life of privilege which blind me to the realities of the peasantry. At some point I even got an AC adapter and was able to use my laptop off my car battery – pinkies out, ladies and gentlemen. And now that I live indoors again, I’m practically a Bilderberg.

Incidentally, something about the flippancy of your remark tells me you don’t know much about being poor yourself. Mainly the way you’re taking offense for nobody’s sake at all. But also in the way you seem to think poor people don’t play videogames.

But yeah, I guess I can’t envision anyone poorer than me… who still has any business reading a gaming site’s article about new releases that cost two hours’ work at minimum wage. Again, not sure who that was for, but I hope you didn’t expect the proles to exultantly gather at your feet.

If you don’t live with your parents and have people to support, you can’t necessarily afford to spend two hours’ income at minimum wage on games. And lest you forget, just because you live in a wealthy country with a high minimum wage and lots of jobs doesn’t mean that everyone does.

And sure, you were “homeless” but didn’t feel the need to sell your laptop.

Again, if you’d ever been in that position, you might realize that pawn shops only take the newer tech. My laptop was worth twenty bucks if I begged em to take it, and that’s only as a favor to me cus I used the place so often they got to know me on a first name basis – pawn shops only take what they can reliably resell, and they tend to pay about half what they expect they can sell it for re: recent listings on eBay. Just FYI, since you clearly didn’t know.

Buuuut I like how you think you can delegitimize my experience by putting it in quotations. I lived in my car for months. I did not have any family to fall back on or I damn well would have. Again, your conceptions of homelessness and poverty only tell me you are way too far from even third-hand anecdotal experience to be casting any kind of aspersions, and FYI, you don’t need to have any specialized experience as a homeless schizophrenic to see that – it’s just as obvious to everyone else here, trust me. Also, you kinda completely miss my point about the two hours’ minimum wage…

Though, since it seems to need genuine explaining (if only in your case), well here: my comment was a general remark on the seemingly ubiquitous popularity of FTL, and the way it has been repped, recommended, streamed, gifted, bargain priced, bundled, re-released with additional content, bargain priced and bundled again – I would make a similar comment about a free giveaway of the original Skyrim. Am I literally able to conceive of people who don’t yet own these games? Yes, actually. But it was clear to everyone else that when I said “anyone” I meant “any gamers,” and by “gamers” I meant “people who are actively involved in buying and playing games, to the extent that they read about them online on a site like RPS.” As in, people who can’t afford these games can be safely assumed to not be buying them – unless they pirate them, in which case the whole issue of expense is moot.

But moreso, I want you to consider the idea that you just told a person who was homeless and schizophrenic, before slaving away for chump change and clawing their way back out of psychosis and into society, that their experience was not quite *homeless enough* for your high standard in homelessness, because they chose to keep their worthless, unpawnable Toshiba laptop – “chose” in this case being relative to the inability to sell it. Again, all you prove is that you’ve never so much as needed to use a pawn shop before. I also didn’t sell my car, cus hey, I needed that, too. I had a job and a doctor to get to, which were more valuable than short term cash. But I suppose if I were *really* homeless I would understand your point, yet alas, I was only the “air quotes” type of homeless, where you still own as much as you can’t pawn, and keep a job and make plans to take showers sometimes.

Yes, “the fucking internet, man” indeed. The flourish with which you sign that off suggests you really thought you were making a decisive point here, which, again, shows only your appalling lack of insight. Quit while you’re behind.

In the end, my only point was, “Gee, I feel like everybody has FTL by now, it’s such a sensation.” Though by now it’s sort of evolved into more of a, “holy hell, what is actually wrong with you?”-type investigation. Who saw that coming? Well hey, if there’s one thing I know, it’s that life’s a journey..!

We’ve made too many compromises already, too many retreats. They invade our space, and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds, and we fall back. Not again! The line must be drawn here! This far and no further!

It was easier than I expected to find someone who hadn’t played FTL among my gamer friends. After briefly contemplating whether they should still be my (gamer) friend if they don’t like FTL, I decided to send them the code anyway